55. Preparing the Next Generation to Stand Strong in a Changing Culture with Doug Hankins

Why are so many young people walking away from their faith, and what can churches and families do to change that?

In this episode of the ETCH Next Gen Podcast, Chuck Peters sits down with Pastor Doug Hankins to discuss the realities facing today's students and the opportunities the church has to equip them for lifelong faith. Together, they explore the cultural shifts shaping the next generation, why faith retention is becoming increasingly difficult, and how intentional discipleship can help young people develop resilient, lasting faith.

Rather than responding with fear, Doug encourages ministry leaders and parents to embrace the moment with confidence, creating environments where students can ask honest questions, build authentic relationships, and discover a faith that endures.

Whether you serve in kids ministry, student ministry, or lead families in your church, this conversation offers practical encouragement and biblical wisdom for helping the next generation follow Christ with confidence.

Subscribe to the ETCH Next Gen Podcast for more conversations that equip church leaders to disciple the next generation with truth, wisdom, and hope.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Graduation Drift

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. We are here to help you understand the unique cultural needs of Gen Z and Generation Alpha. I'm your host, Chuck Peters, and I'm so glad you're here today. This is the Etch Next Gen Ministry Podcast. Hey listeners, welcome to another episode of the Etch Next Gen Ministry Podcast. Hey, if you're a regular listener, I just want to thank you for tuning in. It is an encouragement to me, and I hope that the podcast is an encouragement to you as you lead your kids and student and next gen ministries at your church. We want to partner with you, walk with you, inform, instruct, inspire, and encourage you. And so if this podcast does those things for you, would you please share it with a friend, with a coworker, with someone out serving in ministry? I would love for you to be able to lead one of your friends to join us as a listener to the Edge podcast. Now let's talk about today's episode. Guys, one of the most sobering realities that faces the church today is that many of our students who are active in church during their teenage years disconnect from the church and from their faith after graduation. Parents feel it, pastors see it, student ministry leaders wrestle with it. And the question remains: why does this happen? And what can we do differently? My guest today has spent years helping churches think deeply about discipling students beyond the youth room into a lifelong faith as adults. Doug Hankins serves as the executive pastor and director of student ministries at First Baptist Orlando. And Doug has been invested in the spiritual formation of teenagers, in equipping leaders, and in helping churches create environments where students don't just attend ministry programs, but they develop a lasting faith that endures into adulthood. So in this conversation, Doug joins me to help unpack some of the key reasons that students drift away from the church after high school, what the church might often misunderstand about that transition to adulthood, and to share some practical ministry steps that leaders and parents can take to help our young people stay rooted in Christ and connected in the local church. Join me now as I talk with my new friend Doug Hankins in an episode that we recorded at the SBC conference on the exhibit hall, as we talk about how to keep young people in the church after graduation. Listeners, if you have ever poured years into young people, a young person teaching them the scripture, building relationships, walking with them in discipleship, only to see some of them walk away from the church or walk away from the faith in some situations. We know that's heartbreaking. It can be really difficult and challenging. And there's a tension there that we feel. We love kids, we're concerned for them deeply. And a lot of us, you know, feel uh not well equipped to one, deal with those feelings when that happens, right? Because it does affect us, but also uh to be strategic about what we can actually do that's effective and helping more of our young people stay in the faith rather than walk away. Uh so I'm here today with a new friend, Doug Hankins. Doug, it's great to meet you. Glad you're here. Great to meet you. Thanks for having me. We've got a mutual uh friend in Angie Elkins who connected us today. Uh, we are recording live here at the SBC conference. We're in the the Lifeway Village, our little podcast booth here. So, listeners, if you hear noise and things around, we're we're not sitting at McDonald's or anything, right? We're we're actually on an exhibit hall. So there's a lot of activity and things moving around us. So that's what that background noise is. That's right. So uh so Doug, you you've been in ministry for quite a while. Um, you've worked with student ministry, next gen ministry. Now you're uh lead pastor. Yep. And so from that perspective, you have seen a whole lot. I have, yes. So in so this concern of you know, how we're losing kids to the culture, losing kids from the church is something that I know is important to you. Uh, and we're hopeful that you can offer some encouragement today about what you what what how we might respond to the things that we see happening.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Wow, that's uh that that's a that's a a big task. Hopefully I can bring my little uh small perspective. Low pressure, it's low pressure. Low pressure.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

It's really it's a conversation, right? Because I know there's there's so many listeners out there who who are living in this space. And I think even just a word of encouragement will be really helpful.

The 75% Stat And Stuck Strategies

SPEAKER_02 4:28

Yeah. Uh two weeks ago, our student pastor, technically he's pastor for students and families, Brett Stamps. Shout out Brett Stamps, preached on this on senior Sunday and talked about the statistic. And that that sort of can help us get an objective standard, which is 75% of kids, some some statistics as high as 85% of kids who are regularly involved in student ministry, do not find a church home in college. And that outcome or that choice actually is tied to a host of other outcomes that um that are maybe not positive for transfer of faith next generation.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Yeah. And it's that statistic continues to grow. Yeah. Because I remember when it was 66%, and now we're up into the 75% and pushing higher in some surveys. So it is, it's a trend that's not a good trend.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

It's not going in the direction one would want. Um, and uh, you know, we don't have enough data. So just to add some levity to this, we don't have data past maybe 100 years ago. So I don't know to what extent the starting point is uh maybe uh a normal picture of what could be, but it at least whatever we were doing that was working, let's say in the 1960s, when campus crusades blowing and going and navigators are blowing and going on college campuses and BCM is kind of thriving. Whatever we were doing there and whatever social factors were going on there, they're not present today. And I think a lot of our strategies are perhaps a little bit maybe stuck in a previous era and might just need to lovingly might just need to be adjusted to reach the target audience today.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Yeah, and that I mean that's really the focus of this podcast, right? Where's we know that we can't just do what we've always done and expect a different outcome, right? That's the definition of insanity. And so, but so many of us are yeah, right. We just think if I just do it again, if I just repeat myself, if I say it louder, yeah, things will be different, right? So, what are some of the things from your experience that um that leaders might think are at the core of this problem? Like, what are those common things that people are like, oh, it's because of this?

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Yeah, no,

When Faith Feels Impossible

SPEAKER_02 6:25

this is great. Identifying the problem is the best place to start. So I I think here's the problem. Um, young people, and a young person is anyone between college and mortgage. We'll just say that. That's good. Young people don't have a clear vision andor the right resources to navigate the world of American life on the collegiate landscape and the military landscape and the career place in a way that is radically sold out to Jesus. Yeah. And so the problem is not can they be Christians? It's that can they be, I think, faithful biblical Christians. They can be Christian light, they can be cultural Christians. Yeah, that model is clear to them. But what does it look like to be a, I mean, faithful person following Jesus, navigating just the tremendous cultural forces coming against them in workplace and college and military?

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

That's that's the problem. And that the I think even more so we're finding um young people are telling us by their own admission, it's not that it seems difficult, it seems impossible. Yeah, that's the problem. How do we help something that seems impossible perhaps seem a little more possible, a little more palatable?

SPEAKER_00 7:35

So when we say that it's that doesn't seem possible, what is the itch there? Does it seem possible to really be fully committed to to the Lord in today's culture? Yeah. Or or to stand or to stand strong alone in a college environment where you have so many voices with a different message. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Let's let's just okay, let's just think about this on the conveyor belt of life. Yeah, I come to a church service, I hear the sermon preached, I sing worship songs. I'm I'm leaving the church service deployed and I'm ready to go into the world and be a Christ follower in the world. I show up to my cubicle on Monday morning, and um I'm invited to happy hour that afternoon. Okay, can I go there and drink a non-alcoholic beverage or alcoholic if you're Lutheran? Uh, you know, can I go there and do that and still have a gospel witness? And I don't think that's a clear-cut answer, but happy hour is a core part of American corporate culture. I mean, Christian companies have happy hour that are part of their core corporate culture. And so how does one navigate that?

SPEAKER_03 8:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Um uh inter-office politics. Can I compromise on integrity, you know, for the sake of pragmatic value in order to move up the corporate ladder? That's just in the corporate space, two of them. College campuses. I mean, sex, drugs, rock and roll, partying, sorority life, football games, um, air tagging pornographic material to your friends and or air, you know, air playing it. I mean, it's just like that's just day one of the college experience. How do you navigate that? Even if I want to, how do you navigate that? When I say no, it costs me culturally. I have to say no to things. That seems like an untenable position. Yeah. So perhaps maybe what we're saying is we have to teach our young people and help them be prepared for the other side of a hard no to what culture says is okay. And then how to navigate from a position of weakness. Um, in the 60s, if you went and said, hey, I'm gonna follow Jesus, there people go, oh, you're a Jesus freak, they kind of roll their eyes. Yeah, but there wouldn't be a lot of culture backlash because much of the 60s grew up in the people in the 60s group in the 50s and they understood church life. Yeah. And you you say you're a Christian today, you're already associated with hate and bigotry and being on the wrong side of history and all these things. So, how do you help believers navigate from a position of inferiority and a culture that wants to destroy them?

SPEAKER_00 9:47

And that's the big issue. That's the big problem, right? So it's uh I would I would ask the question, you know, is this is this a post-high school problem or is it a pre-high school formational problem that we have, right? So we're what we're spitting out, using the word spitting, at the end of our church pipeline, right? You you're in kids' ministry, you're in the middle school ministry, you've done VBS, you've gone to church camp your whole life, you're surrounded by a youth group, right, where you're doing all these Christian things and activities, and then we deploy out into the world, whether it's to the workforce or to the military or to college. And I know that even the balance of where kids are going today is changing. Fewer are going to colleges than before, ever before, but all of those environments are secular environments largely. And then, even as I observe Christian colleges, there is such a heavy non-Christian influence in many of our Christian colleges that that's alarming. Yep. So, but what's happening is we're we're sending kids out into the real world where they're faced with real questions uh and real opposition, maybe for the first time, where they have to really think about their faith. You know, and I think maybe a lot of us assume that, you know, when it when uh a child lives at home with their parents and their parents take them to church, they go. And as soon as they have their own, they can make their own decision, they stop. Right. And so it is it that is it these influences that come later, or is it that we really haven't prepared them well? Is that a loaded question? How do you how do you lean into that?

SPEAKER_02 11:22

Uh today the way I answer it is sort of both and. Yeah. Um again, I I think I would comfort parents who maybe listen to podcasts or leaders who are listening to this. It's always been it's always been a challenge.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Um, it's never been this challenging, but it's always been a challenge, so you can take some comfort in that. Uh number two, I think there are some there's some ways in which American life operated fundamentally differently than it operated today. There's much more of a monoculture in 1960. I use this as an arbitrary date because it it's it's sort of important for several statistical reasons we can talk about offline. But um America's a much different place. It's not a monoculture, it was much more monoculture. What I mean by that is you grew up in Peoria, you grew up in uh Palestine, Texas, you grew up in, you know, White Plains, New York, you basically grew up in a very similar it's all homogenized. Homogenized these days, yeah. You black, white, Hispanic. You grew up in a very similar household with very similar shared values. You listen to the same music, you watch the same TV shows. And when you went to college, there was an assumed familiarity with a lot of that. Yeah. There is no assumed familiarity. America is a much of the rest of the world, is a global melting place. And there are some really shifting core values that are not talked about, cared for, embodied by a lot of our population. And so um let me see if I can describe for you what it's like to be a young person going to college. There's a great episode of the West Wing, which Andy, Angie Elkins, our good friend, loves me to Black West Wing. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

We're watching it right now with our 17-year-old. He's never seen it. And so my wife and I watch every night. We we turn on the TV about 9:30, we watch until bedtime, and we're loving going through that with him.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Do we just become best friends? Maybe. Um I love West Wing. I'm watching it for the 21st time. One of my favorite Charlie is one of my favorites. Favorite characters. Yeah. Fantastic. Anyway, there's an episode with um uh the professor from Back to the Future, Christopher Lloyd. Oh, yeah. He comes in, he teaches the Belorussian delegation how to build their own constitution. And there's a debate between Toby, the character Toby, and this professor, Lessing. And they're debating about whether they just need a constitution or something more. And he and the professor says, you can have a constitution, but you have to make sure the values are inherent in the people first because they'll carry the constitution beyond. And that's what it's like being a young person at college. It's like, I have this constitution, this rule book, this thing I'm gonna follow. Great. You're going to a world where nobody shares these core values that undergird your constitution. Right. And so, what's a person to do, especially an 18-year-old, who's having to have conversations about uh misaligned values and basic a priori ideas with their classmates, and they've never had to address that before. And by the way, our churches are not set up for it, and I don't know that they should be. Right. Okay, the churches are set up to do that. I think maybe parenting can do that, but even then, the tax on parents right now to help this is tough. There's a guy named Um, well, I won't go into all the details. There's a professor at Johns Hopkins who wrote a book called Fragile Neighborhoods. And um, he basically said, uh, Seth Kaplan is his name, uh, Dr. Kaplan says that um America has this fragile neighborhood problem that is the equivalent of going to a third world country today and looking at their political problem. Our neighborhoods used to be in the 50s, 60s, a place where there were all these shared values and people met one another and they had a strong support system.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

And today Large and Judeo-Christian values were shared by everybody if they were believers or not. Yes. We knew there was right and wrong, right? Good and bad. Yeah, even the Muslims in this neighborhood went to church, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:35

I mean, it's just like so But that's no longer the case. That's no longer the case. So I think we have a parenting problem. I think we have a neighborhood problem, and I think churches can only be sort of a support to that. Some of the better churches can sort of instill those values, but I don't, I just don't know if in 18 years you can do that. So I think that's the core problem. If you're gonna send people to college, if you're gonna send people to career, if you're gonna send them to military, we've got to get them ready. I would think probably starting at 15, 16 for the world they're actually going to enter, which is like if you're gonna follow Jesus, it's just going, and this is what Jesus said. If you're gonna follow me, I'm sending out a sheep among wolves. So there's two things Jesus says that you've always needed back since Luke 9. Um, you need to be as innocent as doves. That's the moral high ground, right? And you need to be as shrewd or pragmatic as serpents. And I think we've got to have some shrewdness training. And so churches could do anything. It's maybe training people a little more in the shrewdness. All the lawyers and the accountants and the CEOs of companies are amening right now as they're listening to this podcast because they've been banging their heads against the wall for years, going, I know you love Jesus and you've memorized scripture. We need to think about shrewdness. Hi, David Youth. David Youth is saying hi to us right now, if you can't hear that right now. He's praying for me or bowing down or something right now as this is happening. Shout out, David Youth. Um, so I think we need to train. This is what you get when you record live.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

You know that we are not at Subway, we are actually here at uh SVC.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

So, yeah, so I think we've got to have some shrewdness training.

Parenting Seasons And Shrewdness Training

SPEAKER_02 15:59

So let me give you uh something that this works for our parents really receive this well, and I think uh it works. With our parents, we try to tell them this core value, which is you're not raising children, you're raising adults. Yes. Okay. So there is a sense in which parents stay out of fear for the breaking world, try to protect their kids and preserve them from the harsh reality of the real world. And I would say, parents, I love you. Go ahead and like start exposing them to the real world now. Don't just like give them carte blanche, but like help them have context for the real world. You're raising adults who have to go into this real world. That's number one. Then number two, recognize that parenting looks different across four different seasons. And this is true of all leadership development, but specifically true for kids. When kids are basically zero to 10, your role as a parent is to be the absolute dictator of their life. Put on these clothes, put on these shoes, go here. You can't be friends with them. Yes, no. 10 to 18, their will kicks in, they're trying to make good moral decisions for the first time, and you're now an influencer. You can't dictate things to them. You probably can't spank them anymore, right? Grounding is good, but you got to think about creative punishments.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Do we move more away from that uh heavy-handed high control to more of a shared conversation? It's more coaching before we're releasing.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Right. This is where pragmatic training can come in. Hey, what's the wisdom in this? Reading through proverbs, thinking just shrewdly about the world. At 18, there's a giant cultural reset button. Your kids are now adults. Now, they may still be still be on your uh cell phone plan, but they're adults. Your health insurance. And their health insurance, they're driving your car, they're adults though. And so their consequences are gonna be their own. Uh, at this point, everything you give to them, car insurance, all that, those are tools to help them either succeed or fail. And you shift into this role as a parent of being no longer an influencer, you're sort of a consultant for them, and you're like, hey, maybe think about doing this, and they can say yes and they can say no. Okay. And typically in American life, that's 18 and 25, pre-frontal frontal cortex forms at 25. And suddenly kids look back at their parents and say, Oh, my parents are pretty smart. And at 25, you become a life coach. Okay. And you have a much better relationship. So, what we're really talking about, I think, is the 18 to 25.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Where parents have the greatest ground to gain, I think, is in the 18 to 25 year old. Where churches have the greatest ground to gain is in 18 to 25. So here's one of the pragmatic things I think between 10 and 18, parents can do and leaders can do for the kids in their church. They can introduce them to other adults. Kids need mentors, uh, they need a community. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whether you like her or hate her, said, she, I think she's paraphrasing, uh, it takes a village for a child, right? She's not wrong. Okay. Maybe Maya Angelou said it first, or someone is a poet. Um, you need to introduce kids to positive role models. In fact, all the literature and and science says that um college students who have access to multiple role models by the time they're 18, far better, uh, fair better in college and in career and other things. So um, I think 10, 18, having regular dinners together with other couples in church, specifically little silver-haired folks, yes, um, people who've maybe had some mileage on them. Uh we we have uh an AA uh group at our church. We have a ton of recovering alcoholics and drug addicts at our church. And I think having my kids who are now 10 and 13, about to be 11, 14, regularly around these people so they can say, Hey, I was drinking too much and it cost me my career and it hurt my life, and there's no coming back from it. It's no glossy because choices matter and letting my kids absorb that, and you know how kids do, they just process it. Three days later in the pool, they're like, Why was that guy talking about being an alcoholic? Like, hey, because that's a real consequence in this world. Sobering our kids up from 10 to 18, making sure they have a safe community that they can talk to so that maybe they get to college, they have a bad day, they don't want to call mom first. Great, call one of these other people. Yeah, right. We're listening it's high school musical. We're all in this together. So let's give our kids uh as many access points as they can to just wise community. So I think that's the biggest pragmatic training and strategy that I think people can do in the church.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

So, yeah, so that bouncing back to your first point there, uh, and we covered a lot of ground. So fantastic stuff. Uh, Proverbs 22, six is something that we all quote in kids' ministry, student ministry, train up a child or train up a youth, depending on your translation and the way you should go. And we we think, and you'll have a better kid by Friday. Yeah, right. That's not the goal. No, and so I would say, and I do say the goal of kids' ministry is not to make better kids. The goal of student ministry is not to train up better students, it's to train up godly adults, right? Right? We are raising them to be on their own after they leave. And so for many of us, we need to reset our thinking about what's the goal. Yeah, so I have a son who is uh now 20 years old. Uh he's in the military, he's in the army. Awesome. Uh he's in the 60th, working on Black Hawk helicopters and yeah, fantastic, cool stuff. But he he didn't just go from high school to the job he has today. He he went through this thing in the middle that's called basic training. Yeah, right. And the purpose of that, the purpose of that is to get you ready for what's coming next. Right. And I think too many of us think that our kids' ministry or our student ministry is an end in itself rather than a training ground for the rest of life that's coming. And I think using um Stephen Covey going way back in time, seven habits of highly effective people, that although it's old and antiquated, it's one of my favorite books. There's a lot of great stuff in there. Um, one of his main principles in those seven things is begin with the end in mind. Right. Right. And so we I would say as ministry leaders, we need to be thinking about that 18 to 25 window and say, especially in student ministry, what are we doing that's preparing them for that? Right rather than helping them just get through next Friday's exams or get through basketball trials or get through their dating uh situation right now. Those are all important. Yeah, we don't want to not do those things, but what we're doing is so much bigger than that that if we think of ourselves as this kind of closed off universe, that's not what it is. Right. Right. The the goal is to get them ready to send them off and send them out. And so we need to make sure that we are equipping them better for how to take that stand and how to, how to Walk out their faith in the real world, not just in that the safe bubble of the church that they're in.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Yep. Yeah. No, I I think that's right. In fact, I'll I'll do you one better. I think we've got to think up not just 18 to 25, because that's 18 to 25 is sort of sort of a danger zone, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:16

That's a red zone.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

How do we think about this? 18 to 25 is sort of the first test window. Yeah. You have all this theory at 18, all this VBS theology, uh, youth ministry theology. Maybe you go to a church, it has a good college ministry, you graduate at 22, maybe you don't get married. Okay, so 22 to 25. That's your first test window of all this stuff. I now have to put it in practice. That's my pragmatic training. I wonder if churches might should be ready for the 25 to 35 window when they come back and they're a little bit beat up. Yeah. Frontal cortex is formed.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Reintegrate them.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Yeah, churches have got to be ready. And by the way, 50% of them are gonna be single. So they're not all gonna be married and they're gonna bring a host of problems with them, they're gonna bring a host of wounds. We gotta be ready as churches to receive those people in and sort of do some after-the-fact retraining of some things, right? Yeah. So I think that's a side piece. But to your point, um if if I if I meet a young family now, if we're doing a child dedication, and if I was being really direct with them, which I would never be because I'm a pastor and I have to be gracious at this moment and just you know inspire them with hope, um, I would say, okay, listen, your kids are gonna go to public, private school, whatever, for 18 years, and then they're gonna graduate. And maybe they go to college, maybe they don't. Let's say they go to college. College is not gonna be today or then what it is today. Um, it's gonna be 600% more expensive for you. Um, they're gonna be all they're gonna transfer one or two times. Um, this is just the norm. So just be ready for it. Don't make the this is Ted Lasso, uh be curious, not judgmental. Don't be judgmental, right? It's just gonna be the norm. And so be ready for that. And they're gonna graduate, they're gonna get a career, they're gonna get a second career, they're gonna get a third career, they're not gonna get married. At 30, they'll think about dating. At 35, maybe they're gonna start panic dating. Maybe they get married, but 50% of them won't. And so I need you to be prepared to have a single 40-year-old kid, and you've got to have a church and a home that's ready to receive them. What does life look like for that? That's what I would prepare parents for. And I think if parents can just absorb that, recognize we have a saying in our church, the first one to reality wins. Parents can just accept that reality, that it's not a bad reality, that it's not a second-class reality. Then any outcome that happens within that reality is typically going to be just a little bit more positive for them. And so um getting kids ready to navigate that is probably at the top of the list. The go to college, find your spouse, get married, have your first job, get your promotion, white pick picket fence, two and a half kids. Man, that's like a pie in the sky thing. I would, I hope that everybody gets that. That's pie in the sky. The reality I described is probably a lot more statistically likely. So I don't know how that helps you, but it feels like Terminator 2 Judgment Day. I'm like, yeah, and on this date, you know, the AI became sentient and then the world ended. That's what it sort of feels like.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

Which may still happen. Uh we can't rule it out. We can't rule it out. You're right. AI is learning more and more, and it's listening to us right now. Yeah. Uh so yes, yes.

Beyond Bible Facts And Behavior

SPEAKER_00 25:09

We we need to have a longer lens for what we're looking at and to set our sights on something more than just uh Bible facts or Christian acts. Yes, right. So, because so much of what we do, and this is an indictment to the church, right? Is we our ministries focus around, we know we can't control everything, yeah, right. But so we think uh we we need to fill the brains, the intellect, right? And so we approach what does it mean to be a Christian with an intellectualism approach. If you know the the people of the Bible, you can memorize verses and know the stories and uh and the principles that you're okay. Or we say, you know, that to be a Christian is about what you do or don't do, behavioralism, right? And so we have intellectualism and behavioralism. It's like you you don't go to those places or use those words or hang with those people if you're a Christian. And so we kind of approach our ministries from those two things, maybe because we can control them, but but we know that those are both misses, right? Because Jesus said they were, right? Because he looks at the Pharisees and he said they had both. Yeah, they have all the knowledge, they know the law inward, in and out. They they keep the law and their behavior, and they made other people keep it too, legalistically, right? But but his his critique of them was, you honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me. Right. So there's this condition of the heart that's harder to manage too, but that's the a huge difference maker, right? Because we can fill our kids' heads with with with Christian ideas and tell them what they should or shouldn't do behaviorally, but if they don't own the why for that, yeah, if they're not transformed from the inside out, both of those are gonna fail them. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

That's right. You know, as you're talking about this, I just had this mental picture, and I I think this is an intuitive way of answering your question here. But I wonder if we've been um lifting up the wrong model of the ideal Christian family from let's say 10 to 18. The ideal Christian family might be parents are married, they love each other, they come to church every Sunday, their kids are so obedient, they're polite, and they say yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma'am, no. Right? They dress in a formal way when they know to, and they um, you know, they go to school and they make good grades. And okay, that's a sort of an achievement uh-oriented view of the American dream. But I wonder if a better picture, a more healthy picture, let me say this, might be uh parents are struggling to work, each of them have one and a half jobs, you know, they have child separations every so often. Um, life is really tough. Uh kids, I mean, have some real seasons of behavioral problems. But what parents tend to prioritize is not that they have good behavior, but that when they have behavioral problems, they sort of clear the deck as a family, reorient together, and then re-emerge. So that's these these peak seasons of high participation in church and then sort of dealing with some behavioral problems, some marriage issues, re-emerging in the church, pulling back, going to counseling for a little bit, and that that's sort of the stop and start model of 10 to 18 with your kids. And my suspicion is that if kids can learn how to follow Jesus through the realities of those ups and downs, and if mom and dad can learn how to parent them in the midst of ups and downs like that, that 18 to 25 is going to be a little easier by comparison. I I say that only because my personal experience has been that, you know, I was raised, I don't know if you know this about me, so I grew up non-Christian. My dad was an atheist, and for the most part, I was an atheist by the time I was in eighth grade. And I had a dysfunctional, sort of hellacious childhood. I don't know if I can say hellacious on this podcast. Um, so you can bleep that out later. But it was dysfunctional. Uh, sound engineer says good things. Um, it was dysfunctional, and there was a lot of ups and downs. And I remember church people going, man, I'm so sorry this was your childhood, and I'm so sorry you have to go all this. And I received it as being sympathetic. But I look back on that and go, Oh, I think for me, that was sort of the Lord training me in the pragmatics of the reality of the world. When I got to college, choices were easy. Yeah, because nothing was harder than my childhood and my thought, my home life. And I'm not saying that Christian parents need to like give their kids drugs in high school to see how they respond. Yeah, let's not do that. I'm not saying that. Please hear me say, I'm not saying that. Or, you know, unnecessarily exposing them to things that they shouldn't, but um But you're saying if we if we overshelter our kids when we turn them loose in the world, they're in for a big shock. They're in for the big shock. Hey, telling your kids life is tough is not bad. It's what Jesus said in this world, you're gonna have trouble, but but take hard, Jesus has overcome the world. That's gotta be the mantra of parenting.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

You know, and I think one of the things like that that a lot of our kids see in those kind of perfect picture perfect kind of families is uh kids see through a facade, right? So if if mom and dad are pretending everything is great, they know it's not, right? That's that's not a great example. Yeah, so we we need to model for our kids not just how to be perfect, that's not attainable for anybody, yeah, but what it looks like to fail and recover. Fail and recover. Fail and recovery is the best thing for them.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

Yes, yes, that's it. That's the words. You should host a podcast.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

We we're we're only 28 minutes in and we already mailed it. Great. Uh so we're done here. That's great. Let's talk about the Cubs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Are you a Cubs fan? I am a Cubs fan. Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

So my my wife grew up in the Chicago area. So her dad was uh Wheaton, Illinois. Oh. So her dad was a Bears guy. Yeah. So we got a little Cubs by association. I'm from New Jersey, so I'm a Yankee guy.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

So that's a whole different way in the New York Giants. 27 World Series, 28 World Series? 28 World Series. I'm tough. That's tough.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

I'm going back to like the late 70s, early 80s when I was super young, but all those famous people. Yeah, whole different story. That's a whole different story. So so in that, right? So okay, that actually we can turn that into a little segue for this next part of the conversation, right?

Belonging Before Belief

SPEAKER_00 31:07

So we one of the things that we look for is to find things in common with people, to find belonging. And as we've done our research that uh that our next gen team at LifeWay has done with Life Way Research, culminated in our book, Flip the Scripts, where we study the unique needs of Gen Z and Alpha.

SPEAKER_03 31:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

One of the big things that stands out about them is this deep need they have to find belonging, yep. To find a place where they feel seen and known and loved and wanted. And there's this conversation in the church of can we belong before we believe? Yeah. How does the content of the gospel connect with a context of relationship? Right. And so what we know from all that research is we we can't separate those two things, right? It's the relational evangelism and relational discipleship is so much more powerful than knocking on a door and sharing with a stranger. If you do that, do that, keep doing that, right? If God's called you to be the evangelist on the street, more amen. Go do that. But but in most situations, as we minister to kids and students, they need us to be present. Yeah, they need us to be authentic. And then in that relationship of trust and respect, we can have influence. Yeah. When they look at our lives and we and we're honest with them. Yeah. I've I've you know been through hard things in my life, and God will bring you through them too. And you haven't been there yet, young person. Yeah, but those things are gonna come. And I think there's something to that. So my question is around this idea of belonging, yeah. So one of the things that we know, you know, that statistic about how many of our young people leave the church is one thing. And some of our research, we've we've heard some reasons that they give for that. And in most cases, they're relational. Yeah. I never felt I was connected to my youth group, but I never felt connected to the whole church. I felt like people in my church never really accepted me or liked me, right? I never felt really connected. Yeah. And so they leave feeling disconnected and isolated, which which I mean, a lot of us are coming to the church looking for a connection. Yeah so we don't feel isolated. And if we don't, if we don't meet them there with that need, they will find it somewhere. Yeah. And so as they do step out into the workforce of the military or college, there are groups of people who are looking to influence them and to bring them in. And a lot of them may find that belonging in groups that are not the ones that we would want for them.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Man, okay. So there's a lot there. There's a lot there. Let's share you loose. I have so many thoughts. There's another great West Wing uh episode. I love that word six. Yeah, and it's another Toby one. He says, let's not put nothing, let's not put our pieces on the board until we know what game we're playing. Okay. For a lot of people listening to this, maybe your age and just a little bit older. I you we have to keep in mind that the number one thing Americans were looking for in, let's say, the 1960s, they were looking for a church that taught good truth. Yes. They had great belonging in their neighborhood and their family and all that stuff. And so when they went to church, they wanted to hear truth. We needed teaching. Even yeah, teaching. Even D.L. Moody is far back in the late 1800s, right? Uh, you know, truth, what is truth? We believe in God, who is God? Those are the those are the big ideas you're non-Christians asking. So we were looking for truth, we were looking for teaching, and so a great pulpeteer, a great Sunday school program was great. I imagine, so I'll ask you this question. When you grew up, did you feel a sense of belonging in your family and in your neighborhood?

SPEAKER_01 34:23

I would say yes. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm a Gen Xer. Right. Right? So yeah. Yeah, the best generation.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Absolutely. Best music, best movies, all the things. Really good music. Except maybe not the movies. As I watch them now, there's a lot of stuff in those movies. I'm like, my parents let me watch that. Yeah. What's wrong with that? It's a rough watch. But PG rating.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Anyway, that's another podcast.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

There is belonging in uh in the community, in the neighborhood.

SPEAKER_02 34:43

Yeah. So my suspicion then is that you never had a sense like I don't feel like I belong somewhere. You go to church, you hear good truth, that's great. I wouldn't have to do it.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

But there's a lot of overlap, right? So I went to school with the kids who are on my Little League team who were in my Sunday school.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

All the homogeneo homogeny, um, all of the belonging. I think today, with the divorce rate where it is, with the fragile neighborhoods, as we talked about, with all these things, most Gen Alpha, specifically Gen Z, we know this because of the data. And even late millennials would tell you this is that they don't feel like they have a sense of belonging anywhere. Their parents are divorced. Um, they were in a youth group, like I was in a youth group, but I didn't connect with the rest of my church because it was a suit and tie church and I wore skater, you know, shoes and you know, you know, listen to Snoop Dogg. So I like I just didn't connect with all that. Um and so uh when I would say anybody age 40 and younger is coming to church, so that's including the parents and their kids, connection is not it's not an add-on value. It's a bedrock, it's essential, it's a core. It's a core. If we don't have it, we're not coming back.

SPEAKER_03 35:45

No, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:46

If your greeter team isn't making me feel like I'm welcome and I have a place, if I'm not feeling welcome and wanted, I'm not coming back. And so let's go back to Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? So bring in some cognitive psychology here. Uh, there's this Maslow says you've you've got to belong before you can believe. Yeah. It's a it's a fundamental uh uh need to belong somewhere, to have a sense of psychological and physiological safety and community safety. And so uh I wonder if the creeds, and there are some people doing this, I wonder if the creeds of the church that say, I believe that God is this, I believe that God needs to be changed till we believe that God is this. So much of faith today feels like a communal faith. I will believe it with other people because I don't, I can't go to college and face that on my own. But if I've got a team with me, I can go face that. That's right. Yes, right? You need a team. Everybody needs a team, everybody needs community. United, we stand, divided, we fall. That's it. And so I think these things like mentoring, helping kids be uh connected to mentors. I think church partnerships, knowing about other churches and other towns is important. I think pastors should tell people where you're going to college. Oh, you're going there, great. Here's the best church.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

Here's somebody to connect with. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

And not only should I say go connect with them, I'm calling them to find you and making sure that here's a campus ministry.

SPEAKER_00 36:55

We can get you connected. That's right. But we need to have those relationships so we can do that for our kids.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

I don't think it's bad for pastors or pastoral staff to then show up week one of a kid being in new college and say, hey, I'm taking you out to lunch your first week to make sure you get plugged in.

SPEAKER_03 37:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

Right. That's not um over the top. I think that's core. I think that's the minimum behavior of pastors and ministry leaders to ensure that our young people find a place. Let's make it impossible for them to be part of that 75% statistic.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

Let's not send them out alone as the sheep among wolves. Let's go with them and send them in a network that connects them to help keep them in that place where they do have that uh positive influence, where they have that uh others who share their worldview and who can walk with them through those hard things. We when we can do that with someone else, it's always better.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

So maybe that's a goal of SBC. Maybe someone needs to make a resolution, but how do we connect our churches better into like a tribe mentality, especially around some of the top colleges people want to go to, to make sure we just build a relational bridge, make it impossible for people to be a statistic.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

I love it. Yeah, there's a mic drop moment right there. Right there. Let's make it impossible for the kids and students in our churches to become that statistic. And really, it's the it's not that we are, it's that's not an impossible feat. It's not, right? Because although the statistics are intimidating, concerning, they're not going the right direction, yeah. The they don't have to be that statistic in your church. Yeah. And I think we win this church by church, community by community, life by life. Right? We we don't need to just turn them loose to the world and say, we're done here. It's you're on your own. Yeah, that's actually the problem. Walk with them. There's the problem. There's the problem, right? That's right. And so when we think too much in our own silo, or as that, you know, passing the baton around the track, preschool ministry, hands to kids ministry, kids hands to middle school, middle school hands to high school, and high school hands to no one. We we have to fix that. Right. We're all in this together. Yeah, fantastic. Doug, you you mentioned Dwight Moody, and there's a a quote that I love of his, which you probably know, uh, where he he had said, uh, he had said, if I could relive my life, I would devote my entire ministry to reaching children for God. So, listeners, as you are out there, even Moody says he sees the importance of kids' ministry, of student ministry, of next gen ministry. Right. It's so valuable that we invest our lives, not just the gospel, 1 Thessalonians 2, 8, that we cared so much for you that we shared not only the gospel, but our very lives. Right. Right? We we have to be that invested. And so the work that you are doing in your church, in your community, with the kids and families that God's entrusted to your ministry, kind of stay faithful. The goal isn't success, it's faithfulness. Yeah, and invest in those young people to set them up for success beyond today, knowing that the real goal is not to train up better kids or better better students, but to raise up godly adults.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

Love it, love it, amen.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

And Doug, thank you so much. Thanks for being here. Yeah, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, uh, thanks for your ministry and all that you do to, and we know you love this next

A Better Church For Singles

SPEAKER_00 40:03

generation. Now you you have a new book that's out that is not directly connected to this topic, but I want to take a minute to to uh make a connection for our listeners. So, listeners, I know as you're serving out there in preschool kids, middle school, and high school ministry, many of you are single. Yeah, and you are ministering as a single person. For some of us, it can be really challenging to say, how can I guide parents how to parent when I've never been married or never been in a never been a parent? Uh, but you have a new book. It's still single, still called. Tell us a little bit about this book, put it in a nutshell for us. Who's it for and what are they gonna find?

SPEAKER_02 40:38

Yeah, here's my elevator pitch. Uh, there's nowhere more lonely to be a single person than walking through the doors of a church. Because most our churches, like most legacy institutions, are built for married couples. Uh, and I find that to be a really odd statistic because Jesus was single all his life. So the Lord that we follow was a single man in his 30s. And if he came to most of our churches, he'd end up in the lobby and someone would try to set him up with their niece. And so uh I wrote this book as a way to try to help single people feel heard and feel validated and have a pathway to navigate this crazy world. And I also wrote it to their parents and church leaders to help them um understand and value single people and make a way to have single people be fully integrated into the life of most churches. And so I hope to be a little bit of a yinta bringing these two groups together so that we can have a better, fuller church. Singles make up 50% of our population. That's a huge mission field we're missing in churches. So let's go get them.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

It's another area where we are not always doing the greatest job and seeing and acknowledging and recognizing and ministering to that segment very well. It is called Still Singles, Still Called by Doug Hankins. It is a BH title. It's the LifeWay, uh, LifeWay published book. You can find listeners, you can find that at LifeWay.com or Amazon, I'm sure, wherever else you find quality books. Yep. But I would encourage you to check that out. We'll drop a link in the show notes that you can find that and get there quickly. Doug Hankins, thank you again. Thanks for having me. This has been fun. Listeners, thank you. Listen, thank you for the ministry that you do. The work you're doing is not only important, it's crucial for the future of the church as we reach the next generation and equip them to find and follow Jesus and to live their whole lives for him. Go back out and do what you do with your whole heart. And remember, the goal isn't success, it's faithfulness. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back again soon for another episode of the Etch Next Gen Ministry Podcast. This episode of the Etch Next Gen Ministry Podcast was brought to you by our incredible production team, executive producer Angie Elkins, producer Nikki Ogden, edited by Trey Garza with sound engineer Donnie Gordon, and recorded in the Lifeway Podcast Studios at Lifeway Headquarters in Brentwood, Tennessee. I'm your host, Chuck Peters. Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you back again soon for another episode of the Etch Next Gen Ministry Podcast.